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Nancy Wilson performs at the Blue Note in New York on May 10, 2010.CHAD BATKA/The New York Times News Service

Nancy Wilson, the Grammy-winning “song stylist” and torch singer whose polished pop-jazz vocals made her a platinum artist and top concert performer, has died.

Ms. Wilson, who retired from touring in 2011, died after a long illness at her home in Pioneertown, Calif., near Joshua Tree National Park, her manager and publicist Devra Hall Levy told The Associated Press on Thursday. She was 81.

Influenced by Dinah Washington, Nat (King) Cole and other stars, Ms. Wilson covered everything from jazz standards to Little Green Apples and in the 1960s alone released eight albums that reached the top 20 on Billboard’s pop charts. Sometimes elegant and understated, or quick and conversational and a little naughty, she was best known for such songs as her breakthrough Guess Who I Saw Today and the 1964 hit (You Don’t Know) How Glad I Am, which drew upon Broadway, pop and jazz.

She resisted being identified with a single category, especially jazz, and referred to herself as a “song stylist.”

“The music that I sing today was the pop music of the 1960s,” she told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2010. “I just never considered myself a jazz singer. I do not do runs and – you know. I take a lyric and make it mine. I consider myself an interpreter of the lyric.”

Ms. Wilson’s dozens of albums included a celebrated collaboration with Cannonball Adderley, Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley; Broadway – My Way; Lush Life; and The Nancy Wilson Show!, a bestselling concert recording. How Glad I Am brought her a Grammy in 1965 for best R&B performance, and she later won a Grammy for best jazz vocal album in 2005 for the intimate R.S.V.P (Rare Songs, Very Personal) and another one in 2007 for Turned to Blue, a showcase for the relaxed, confident swing she mastered later in life.

Ms. Wilson also had a busy career on television, film and radio, her credits including Hawaii Five-O, Police Story, the Robert Townsend spoof Meteor Man and years hosting NPR’s Jazz Profiles series. Active in the civil-rights movement, including the Selma march of 1965, she received an NAACP Image Award in 1998.

Ms. Wilson was married twice – to drummer Kenny Dennis, whom she divorced in 1970; and to Wiley Burton, who died in 2008. She had three children.

Born in Chillicothe, Ohio, the eldest of six children of an iron foundry worker and a maid, Ms. Wilson sang in church as a girl. She was in high school when she won a talent contest and was given her own local TV program.

She later moved to New York and got in touch with Mr. Adderley’s manager.

“He set up a session to record a demo,” Ms. Wilson later observed during an interview for the Los Angeles Philharmonic. “Ray Bryant and I went in and recorded Guess Who I Saw Today, Sometimes I’m Happy and two other songs. We sent them to Capitol and within five days the phone rang. Within six weeks I had all the things I wanted.”

Her first album, Like in Love!, came out in 1959, and she had her greatest commercial success over the following decade despite contending at times with the latest sounds. Gamely, she covered Beatles songs (And I Love Her became And I Love Him), Stevie Wonder’s Uptight (Everything’s Alright) and Son of a Preacher Man, on which she strained to mimic Aretha Franklin’s fiery gospel style.

In the 1970s and after, she continued to record regularly and perform worldwide. She stopped touring in September, 2011.

She leaves her son, Kacy Dennis; daughters Samantha Burton and Sheryl Burton; sisters Karen Davis and Brenda Vann; and five grandchildren.

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